Mike Coupe, Sainsbury's boss in waiting, nearly has a full house in supermarket bingo.

Before joining Justin King in the orange corner in 2004, Coupe was an executive at Asda, Tesco and, ahem, Iceland. Morrisons is even rumoured to have tried to poach him to run the business before signing up current chief executive Dalton Philips. Few retail bosses can claim such an overview of the industry.

Tall, spindly and bespectacled, with a jolly, slightly geeky, demeanour and a sharp sense of humour, Coupe is a very different character to the more glossy King. No less competitive, he is less overtly ambitious. But as both made clear on Wednesday, the pair have worked closely together on Sainsbury's strategy over the last decade.

Coupe joined just months after King took the top job and since 2010 has been responsible for Sainsbury's marketing, trading, supply chain, IT and online operations. He's credited with inventing Sainsbury's BrandMatch promotional scheme and has led the supermarket's recent attack on rival Tesco over price comparisons and the value of ethical sourcing. He was also in early on the internet revolution, kickstarting Asda's e-commerce business in the late 1990s.

The son of a medical supplies salesman who was also an engineer and inventor, Coupe studied physics at university but started his career at Unilever, where he became assistant brand manager for Flora margarine. He moved on to Tesco, where he rose to become head of household products, before jumping ship to Asda where he was boss of the Dales Discount chain – experience that may well come in handy in his battle against today's rampant discounters, Lidl and Aldi.